Category: Painting

Here are some art journal pages I have been doing recently, trying out different materials and seeing how I can play with them to create something. The first one I decided to rip a mixture of papers up and glued them to the page, before spraying and painting over the top. I like the textures this created. The second picture I wanted to create a blue page so sprayed a mixture of green and blues and water onto the page and I had some cute fish postcard which I cut out and stuck onto the page. While it isn’t as good as I did hope (it is quite difficult to draw onto the shimmery spray) I am quite happy with it as it is about the process rather than the overall piece and just doing these pages has given me lots of inspiration.

I have been so productive with my art journal, I think because I’m really excited to be using my new materials! This one looks quite dark, I think because I used so many things on the page, including grunge paste which I scrapped into, then dylusions sprays, acrylic paint, pen, and grunge paper I die cut into the flowers, butterflies and hearts. I am still quite happy the way it came out as I think it is quite interesting and gave me the opportunity to play with my art and enjoy the process much more.

I love the colours of this page (which I scanned in) and I used the grunge paste more sparingly with a stencil to get a different effect. I also made my second video of me making this which you can watch here:

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So, after a few frustrating attempts to draw again, an idea came to me for my next Sins painting. I am a better painter than I am at drawing, which annoys me because I just want to paint! But also because I don’t really know how to get better at drawing, apart from maybe shading… (I was much better at school but seem to have lost that.)

I know planing is the key to a good painting (at least for me) so this is one of my sketches I went over with in pen:

And here is the very beginnings of the painting, which I am pretty pleased with:

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Writing a little about colour in art in my last blog started me thinking about key elements in my art and one that is significant yet maybe not so obvious is composition.

I’ve always seemed to have a good eye for composition – the way things fit together on a page or canvas, creating patterns with my wall collages. I have tended to see the piece as a whole before it is complete and remember at school in art class other students would do tiny drawings that floated in a white abyss of an A3 sketchbook. I would make sure every inch of my sketchbook was covered!

The way something is placed has always been central to my paintings and more recently in my crafting and altered art. Where a figure or central point is in relation to the background, foreground and other images in the painting is what brings the piece together as a whole. Otherwise it would look a mess. At the same time, I like to put a twist on certain ideas relating to the rules of painting and bring a different perspective to my art. This could be having the focus of the piece off centre, like this painting below.

The fuzzy creature is the central point, but off to the left and the table is off to the right. Yet these elements and the tree in the background balance out the composition and it works well as a painting.

Another example is also with my altered notebook:

The background paper unifies the front cover, allowing a free approach to where I place embellishments. Yet having the large white flower on the bottom right meant using a different element to give the overall picture balance.

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I started this doodle/ sketch without any real idea, yet when I started to colour it in – especially the blue hair – an idea for a painting struck me!

I have a really big canvas I think this idea will work well on, just not sure how I’m going to actually paint it! I’m going have some flowers and vines on the left side and make it more colourful like a garden.

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A little while ago a colleague at work compared my paintings to an artist I hadn’t heard of called Tara McPherson, saying she did otherworldly women with strange cut outs. Well, I was more than flattered when I looked her up and then fell in love with her style immediately!

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Well, this is just lovely! This is what I aspire to have one day, an entire crafting room with all my supplies where I can find everything I need and it is organised and beautiful! I’ve been much better at organising my materials and tools though, having separate boxes so I know what is where. about 2 years ago I bought a laptop table that you place on the bed and use that for many crafting and painting things. It has proved very useful 🙂

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I wrote a blog a little while ago about my new project based around the seven deadly sins. It will be a big project as I am going to do seven paintings, however I do like a challenge! My first painting is going to be Vanity and I have been doing some preliminary sketches and research on ideas. I want it to reflect my current painting style but also show an obvious development towards something new. My paintings over the last few years or so are very stylised and almost cartoonish, but now I want to combine that with something a bit more realistic and toned down. It will be interesting to see how it will work.

I had a major filling done this week so I’ve not been feeling very well. This and working means I’ve not done as much art as I would have liked, but it is a three day weekend starting tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to get back into it again.

I sketched onto the canvas earlier which can be daunting sometimes, but I know this is the very beginning and once I start painting, it will all come together.